The Lunatics are Back

Deputy Chief Locke lightly coughed. The red-faced chief barely managed to contain his rage. His attempt at a welcoming smile looked made him look like a deranged demon from the underworld.

"Deputy Chief Locke. You're back with Deputy Heston. Great. Please come in and find a seat. What brings you here, Deputy Heston? I thought that you returned to the campus with Headmaster Marin."

"Not exactly. I decided to do a couple of experiments in the city. Have a look. You may find this information… helpful."

Ramona took a stack of papers out of her cloak and passed them to the chief. His eyes widened in worry and amazement as he looked through them. A couple of the more impatient officials and officers peered over his shoulder to begin reading.

"This… where did you get this data? Do you have the original artifact? How did you get it?"

"I ran the experiments myself over the past few hours. The original artifact came from our source who complained about a scam. It is in a safe and confidential location."

The chief nodded briefly in understanding before he went back to reading the rough results. While the bigshots discussed the data, Ramona turned to one of the people awkwardly standing along the wall. Not everyone could surround the chief's desk.

"What's happened over the last few hours?"

"Well, after Chief Berton and the military brass received an anonymous tip about potential scammers from the university, they sent out a couple of units to investigate. Several suspicious stalls and two small warehouses were discovered. In short, those in custody died, the corruption of the gate staff came to light and the warehouses held evidence pointing to the True Order."

"Those lunatics are back?!"

The events of that day were an overall loss for Forest Waypoint, but the tail of the True Order was still barely caught. The officers had little authority to investigate the stalls and warehouses without warrants or probably cause. The suspected scammers were highly suspicious, but kept everything in legal order.

Thus, the officers could only let the suspicious ones go. After this, they all scattered. Both vendors and the goods disappeared, leaving their stalls behind. Fortunately, one of the units got lucky and noticed a suspicious wagon leaving one of the warehouses. When it exited a small side gate, the wagon was only briefly stopped and wasn't searched at all.

The unit jumped at the chance and reported this violation to the military. The military quickly arrived and captured the wagon. They also discovered the gate staff was heavily bribed. The arrested drivers and gate staff mysteriously died while being transported back to police headquarters. Only the wagon and goods made it back.

With several deaths and a corruption case, the police got a warrant to search the warehouses. There, they found small artifact workshops in shambles. The artifact stockpiles and most of the resources had been destroyed. The wagon drivers had taken the components of most value and destroyed everything else.

This was not a small operation. A few tiny clues were left behind. Along with the manner of death for the gate staff and wagon drivers, everything pointed towards the True Order. The police and military were furious. These roaches should have been stamped out a long time ago. Yet the city itself let them back in. How could they miss these traitors?!

The military immediately took over the case. The entire city could collapse depending on how it went. The mayor had called for an emergency meeting at the police department. An emergency message had been sent back to the capital.

Soon all of the city leaders were gathered in the police headquarters. Everyone aside from the mayor, garrison commander, Chief Berton and Ramona was thrown out of the chief's office. Their discussion took hours. Finally, they settled on a course of action well after dawn broke. With any luck, the True Order was foiled at the starting line and the city should stay peaceful.

**********

The next day, Aayla felt like death. It was well after 8 am, yet Ramona was nowhere to be seen. Her stomach growled loudly in protest. She missed dinner last night then worked all night and missed breakfast this morning.

Suddenly, a knock sounded on the door. Ramona cautiously slipped inside. The wonderful scent of baked bread filled the room.

"I hope that's breakfast with some coffee because I am about to die without it."

"Fresh from the place right next to the police headquarters."

Ramona traded her food for Aayla's report. Ten minutes later, Aayla had finished her coffee.

"I FEEL ALIVE AGAIN! Coffee is liquid heaven."

"I'm glad you enjoy it, because we have another long day ahead. The Forest Waypoint higher ups are in a bit of a tizzy today."

"What's going on?"

"It's a good thing that you reported those scammers. Long story short, they're connected to the True Order and the artifacts have certain issues. Apparently, some other citizens and students were a bit suspicious, so we'll be able to hide your involvement with last night's, well technically this morning's, case."

Fortunately, Aayla had already finished her coffee otherwise she would have spit it out again.

"Seriously?! I thought that those guys were kicked out a long time ago."

"There are some less than desirable circumstances around that. The military is taking over the case, along with the Terran creature ones. The higher ups from the capital were already getting worried about the Terran animals, so they've sent out orders for the military to look into the creatures as well. The higher ups don't like how they started appearing then the True Order selling bad artifacts to students.

"You should expect to be called in about your involvement today. The military garrison brass already know that you purposefully approached one of the scammers and that you've been working with the Terran creatures. I've arranged for you to be with Commander McGrath and Captain Figgins. You've been working with them, and they're technically leading your cases anyways."

"This is already my fifth day here. I won't be delayed going back to Nafriton, right? I need to study for finals. Unless I can use the military to skip finals?"

"Unfortunately, no. At most your return will be delayed by a couple of days. They're just interested in seeing how you handle the creatures. They've been a bit angry about the police 'hoarding' the Nafriton delegation and cases."

Ramona put all of the report files back into the envelope. She sealed it with the artifact inside. With the flick of her wrist the eavesdropping magic disappeared.

"*Phew* That was taking some energy to keep up that magic over a long distance. I need to go deliver this report to the police station. Aayla, just stay in your room until Captain Figgins or Commander McGrath come to get you. They shouldn't be too much longer. I'll see you back on campus."

With her face stuffed full of food, Aayla waved goodbye. She devoured the rest of her breakfast, cleaned herself up then went downstairs to the lobby. Not even ten minutes later, Captain Figgins arrived.

When they arrived at the police station, the duo was whisked away by eager military officers. They wanted to know everything about her interaction with the vendor that she purchased her brooch from. Aayla seriously wondered if they read the report that she compiled. They kept asking the same questions that Ramona already asked.

"Why did the vendors seem suspicious?"

"Mostly because their prices were going out of business outrageous, their advertising methods seemed predatory and dishonest, they only targeted students and their neighbors didn't know them very well."

"Did you notice anything else that was suspicious?"

"Aside from the outrageous prices and weird enthusiasm? No."

"Why did you approach a True Order operative?"

"I didn't know! I thought that he was a typical scammer after money or something! I'm not that stupid."

And so on and so forth. After reminding the officers for what seemed to be the 1,000th time that she already answered their questions in Ramona's report, the first round of questioning was over.

The rest of the day was business as usual, except that she went on missions with soldiers instead of police officers. The soldiers triumphantly gazed at the police officers as if to say 'Hehe, we stole the wizards from Nafriton and your teacher is now ours~!' while the officers bitterly glared back and gnashed their teeth. Tch. They'll get those greedy sore losers for this.

For the first mission, Aayla went into the forest surrounding the city. Of course, she had travelled through it on a road before. Aayla had simply never spent much time in it before aside from when she first arrived.

While the police officers investigated complaints in the city, the soldiers had explored the forest to find any beasts, magical or otherwise, that could threaten the city. Obviously, outside the city was much more dangerous. Captain Figgins kept Aayla nearby at all times. Who knows when something could jump out of the undergrowth?

Their destination was a spot fifteen miles southwest of Forest Waypoint. Travelers had reported a strange creature while travelling on a road towards the city. Fortunately, that meant the group didn't have to leave the road and cross through the tall snow drifts outside the city.